Madhukar Pai (also known as Madhu Pai) is an Indian medical doctor, academic, advocate,[1] writer,[2] and university professor. Pai's work is around global health, specifically advocacy for better treatment for tuberculosis[3] with a focus on South Africa and India.[4][5] Pai is the inaugural Chair of the Department of Global and Public Health in the School of Population and Global Health[6] and holds a Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology and Global Health at McGill University.[7]
Pai is a frequent media commentator on the COVID-19 pandemic in India,[10][2][11] and in 2021 drew comparisons of the collective global action taken in response to the COVID19 pandemic versus the relative inaction towards tuberculosis.[12] His 2021 paper in PLOS Medicine addressed power asymmetries in global health.[13]
In 2020[14] and in 2021[15] he published papers and contributions about the decolonisation of global health work.
In 2021, Pai was critical of the global failure to widely vaccinate people against COVID-19, accused high-income nations of vaccine hoarding, and called for a waiver of intellectual property laws regarding COVID19 vaccines.[16] In 2022 he described the global response to COVID-19 as an "unmitigated disaster".[17]